Monday, October 12, 2015

Week 59 - Shakirra gets baptized!

It's been a really fun week! Lots of good stuff happened. Jesus and Martina got married and we got to drive to Columbia for it!! It was such an awesome experience. They have been waiting for this day for so long and they look so happy :) Now Jesus can finally be baptized!! There are a couple really small things we need to work out but it should happen in the next month :)

Something else we have been focusing a lot if less-active work. There are so many less-active members on our rosters who have moved and nobody knows their new addresses!! But we've been talking to members who know everyone and calling the phone numbers we have and getting new phone numbers from people and all this stuff so we can find them and get them in contact with the church again. It's been awesome! We've been able to find a lot of members who hadn't been visited in forever by missionaries or other members.

On Tuesday we taught a lady named Dilia who we tracted into about a week or so ago. She is really interested and happens to know a member from our branch already! It's pretty cool when stuff like that happens :) We've only taught her one lesson, though, so we will see how things go!

Over the weekend a few things happened. First of all, three weeks ago Elder Solis and I were knocking a few doors near an appointment we had when the appointment fell through. We met a lady named Shakirra who we gave to the English missionaries as a referral! Here's the crazy part-- on Saturday she got baptized!! She was apparently incredibly solid and just loved everything and was baptized as soon as was possible. It's cool to look back at experiences like that and realize that that lesson fell through so that we find Shakirra. We didn't teach her but without us finding her she wouldn't have heard the gospel at that time! At the baptism she was really emotional and thanked us for knocking on her door that day. So awesome! :)

That evening our branch had a Hispanic party type of thing where they set up a bunch of tables that represented all the South and Central American countries. They also had a bunch of people prepare folk dances from their countries and it was super cool. We even had some investigators come!! There were so many people there and it was just a super fun party.

On Sunday we taught Bobby and Macy, Angel and Luz's kids! We shared with them part of the Plan of Salvation. It's interesting because they have very little religious background so we are starting from the bottom with them. It was a really good lesson though especially because Luz agreed to be baptized on November 14th with her kids!! She felt good about the date too because the 11th is her birthday :) Miracles do happen, woohoo!! :)

Overall it was a super cool week. Lots of awesome stuff happened and as I reflected and tried to apply what we learned from General Conference I saw a lot of blessings. This church is the true church! Love you all!

Love, Elder Hayes

Photo 1: last monday we went to the botanical garden in st louis! It was super cool and they had lots of really pretty gardens and cool exhibits!!!

This is an investigator elder Hayes and elder Solis referred to elder Atkin (my friend's son from AZ - small world!) and elder Jimenez. Elder Atkin got to baptize her and my son and his companion were able to be there. So fun!